Good practice:

Grants for Industrial development, improving competitiveness, digital transformation + job creation

The current economic situation, after a long crisis period (from 2008 to 2015) plus the covid-19 sanitary crisis, priorities tools to invest on companies and business projects capable to employee generation and its maintenance through time, without forgetting the industrial innovation and production specialization. The main objective of this program is the Increasement of economic activity, with high quality and perdurable employment.
So, this Practice is a general Call for grants for Andalusian entrepreneurs and SMEs, for funding their projects according to a list of conditions previously communicated in the Andalusia official bulletin.
Each trimester, there is an amount of grants to be awarded to businesses focused on industrial development, competitivity improvement, digital transformation, productive innovation in the field of smart specialization and employment creation.
The main beneficiaries are SMEs, Big Companies (mainly related with technology, research and innovation), self-employeds, and freelancers.
Also businesses associations, and foundations related with determined type of projects of economic activity boosting and modernization services.
To access to these grants, the businesses have to have at least 4 years of continuous activity before the deadline. They must be up to date with their obligations to present and deposit the annual accounts in the competent official registry, and they have to be duly registered in the competent official registry.

The total amount assigned is 145M €. This incentive Program is co-financed by FEDER in a 80 %, through the Global Competitiveness-Innovation-Employment Grants for Andalusia.

During the 2020, despite the sanitary crisis, the project granted more than 460 Andalusian SMEs and businesses, with different money amounts depending on the specific needs of each companies. The Agency has designed a supporting measurements to help businesses affected by the Covid 19 crisis. There are 6 specific supporting lines, and we must highlight the postponement measures in the collection of loans granted by the IDEA agency, and subsidies for the payment of bank commissions.

The difficulties to access to any financial economic support for the Andalusian businesses is a common circumstance, specially for SMEs in Andalusia. The different services for supporting entrepreneurs, both public and private, generate difficulties to access to any financial help.

The current situation of crisis (economic + sanitary) is similar in some regions of Europe, but can be slight differences due to previous economic situation. With this starting point, the initiatives that boost the business projects through grants awarding, according to high commitment with employment, searching and innovation, competitiveness and long-term sustainability, are welcome in every part of our continent. Specially when they are launched by public administrations capable of getting funds from other national or supranational institutions, both public and private, like is the case.